There was no laser light show, only glow-in-the-dark letters on black posterboard. But the pulsating music as Bill Bradley loped towards the school auditorium was the same beat that sends the New York Knicks charging into Madison Square Garden.

That beat had 71-year-old Bob Kusy dancing in his seat. Long before he started following Bradley's Democratic presidential campaign, Kusy followed his pro basketball career. 'I knew all the guys back then, but Bill more than most because he was so good,' he said before Bradley's appearance at Johnston High School.

Hardly squeamish about being seen more as a jock than a President, Bradley encourages fascination with his old career. He regales every crowd with at least one tale from his years with the Princeton Tigers, the United States' 1964 Olympic gold-medal team, and the Knicks. His first political ads showed footage from the Olympics and he sometimes brings old team-mates such as Dave DeBusschere along on the stump.

The presidential campaign is plodding into its first primary. And the reality of the presidential race is that its map is being defined not by the political issues, but by the latitudes and longitudes of celebrity.

On the Democratic side, Harrison Ford and Jack Nicholson are backing Bradley. The Knicks themselves, past and present team members, played a celebrity gala game for him at Madison Square Garden. Bradley has bagged Calvin Klein, and even Alice Cooper - the heavy metal star whose shows used to feature mock executions..

On Al Gore's side, Kevin Costner and Barbra Streisand have turned out, along with Quincy Jones and Don Henley of the Eagles.

For the Republicans, George Bush may, like Gore, have all the charisma of a Dallas traffic jam but he has managed to sign up Jerry Seinfeld and the country and western crooner Pat Boone.

Bush has also recruited Disney top dog Michael Eisner and martial arts star Chuck Norris. John McCain last week added a new name to his bandwagon, claiming the mantle of Ronald Reagan - cowboy and right-wing rebel. McCain also picked up a couple of useful endorsements from the land of the living: David Geffen of Dreamworks, the rock band Pearl Jam and the veteran TV producer Norman Lear.

On the frozen cornfields of Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne, voting takes place in eight days. The primary is expected to be an uninteresting one, though not unimportant for frontrunners Bush and Gore, who must both win if they are to retain a shred of credibility, and probably will - in the run up to the real prize of 'Super Tuesday' - the 12-state primary on 7 March.

Bradley has spent money but little energy in Iowa, McCain little of either.

In New Hampshire, where the primary will be held on 1 February, the picture is radically different, the voltage higher, the place where outsider Bill Clinton first became a contender.

New Hampshire will be a test for those who have established themselves as contenders, but not as winners. McCain leads the Bush juggernaut by a few lengths in some polls, though the media's love-affair with him is ebbing. Bradley, meanwhile, is spending like a madman to steal a march on Gore. But New Hampshire could end it all for both of them.

If not, there will follow a rivetting couple of months of compressed primaries, through 'Southern Tuesday' - when Gore will stand or fall - and finally 'Super Tuesday'.

The need to package and propel the candidates is especially urgent this time for two principal reasons. First, they all face a more formidable enemy than each other - apathy. Harvard University's 'Vanishing Voter Project' finds that 74 per cent of the electorate do not support any candidate. Voters say they are dismayed by the partisanship of Washington, and spending of so much time, money and effort on the Lewinsky affair.

The second reason is that all candidates are playing a game on Clinton's field, and by his rules - those of non-politics at a time when the economy is strong. For all the flying sparks, the leading candidates (with the possible exception of McCain) have to sound more or less like Clinton, leaving ideology to the no-hopers in the wings. The President even provides a negative model to unite the field, that of character. The message is: do not, whatever you do, appear like him.

Hence the need to pack a good life story, as seen in the proliferation of political books that force even potboilers off the shelves. Hence the need to get a personality that is anything unlike Clinton's. Words such as 'vision' and 'character' poll well.

And hence the need to raise cash. Lots of cash; more of it than has ever blessed, or sullied, any election in any country.